“Sotto due negri, e sottilissimi archi Son due negri occhi, anzi due chiari soli, Pietosi a riguardar, a mover parchi.”
“Sotto quel sta, quasi fra due vallette, La bocca sparsa di natio cinabro; Quivi due filze son di perle elette, Che chiude ed apre un bello e dolce labro: Quindi escon le cortesi parolette Da render molie ogni corrozzo e scabro: Quivi si forma quel soave riso, Ch’ apre a sua porta in terra il paradiso.”
A perfect Paradise of material delights must have been Tasso’s garden of Armida, in the XV. Canto of the Jerusalem. Yet in these things does Byron so often approach to the rivalry of Tasso and Ariosto, both in his appreciation of sensual beauty, and in his grace of diction, that this alone, in many minds, would have stamped him as a great poet. Nevertheless, when other natures step in to judgment, they behold him at times glorying in the midst of an Alpine storm, exulting in the lightning, muttering, tone for tone, the loud crash of thunder; rejoicing and abroad upon the night like a fierce passion let loose, breathing life and soul and the voice of loud defiance, into the solid mountains.
“O night, And storm and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along From peak to peak the rattling crags among, Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers from her misty shroud Back to the joyous Alps who call on her aloud!
And this is in the night: most glorious night! Thou wert not made for slumber!—let me be A sharer in thy fierce and fair delight— _A portion of the tempest and of thee_. How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, And the big rain comes dancing to the earth! And now again ’tis black—and now the glee Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain mirth, As if they did rejoice o’er a young earthquake’s birth.”
Heavens! what a terrible fascination in the fellow! Here is shown not only the weird psychology of the north, but another great illustration of Lord Byron’s humor; for what but a spirit racy of the lower regions, could invoke that loud and awful warring of the elements, that darting to and fro from crag to crag, of deadly thunderbolt, as a fair, congenial delight; and long to claim kindred with, and become a part of the destroying emissary?